04/01/2012

11/29/2011

Growing your company sales by adding promotional and sales agents and increasing your marketing exposure is an obvious way to beef up revenues but few companies consider the virtually instantaneous power of strategic alliances. Creating strategic partnerships with 'would be' rivals and companies that cater to your business genre can help you rapidly take possession of your market.

If you are a printer, team up with brochure designers, ink and paper distributors, advertising firms and print solution resellers. If you are a solar panel technology company then team up with corporations who have government grants for research and development and other alternative energy groups such as wind energy turbine technology firms, Department of Energy contractors etc. By teaming up with other companies and combining resources. You can stimulate growth in every area of your business. Look at each individual product and service you offer.

Now think of other companies who you can team up with to share resources. Make sure you create win/win opportunities for everyone involved as this is the only way to truly take advantage of this type of partnership. Don't look at this concept as leaching off of other company's resources, to the contrary, carefully researched and structured alliances will transform the here and now as well as future business of all parties involved. Strategic alliances will also enhance your appeal as an 'invest-able' business to venture capital firms and angel investors.

Think about it. You have a carefully constructed and managed corporate infrastructure. You've taken the steps to make sure that each of your 'C' level executives has been promoted as the 'who's who' in the industry to speed up investor due diligence and increase customer confidence. You've carefully selected a board of directors that will effectively and actively guide you through the turbulent industry environment with their proven track record of success. And you've even initiated and solidified powerful partnerships that enhance your business concept and strengthen the longevity of your company.

You are now ready for expansion, investors, venture capital firms, taking your company public, attracting a professional CEO or CFO and practically anything your company is setting out to do.

About the Author:

Go Public with Reverse Merger, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183 Expand Your Company Into China We Can Make Global Growth Happen For Your Company

05/23/2011

One of the fastest growing trends for business today is the increasing number of strategic alliances. According to Booz-Allen & Hamilton, strategic alliances are sweeping through nearly every industry and are becoming an essential driver of superior growth. Alliances range in scope from an informal business relationship based on a simple contract to a joint venture agreement in which for legal and tax purposes either a corporation or partnership is set up to manage the alliance.

For small businesses, strategic alliances are a way to work together with others towards a common goal while not losing their individuality. Alliances are a way of reaping the rewards of team effort - and the gains from forming strategic alliances appear to be substantial. Companies participating in alliances report that at much as 18 percent of their revenues comes from their alliances.

But it isn't just profit that is motivating this increase in alliances. Other factors include an increasing intensity of competition, a growing need to operate on a global scale, a fast changing marketplace, and industry convergence in many markets (for example, in the financial services industry, banks, investment firms, and insurance companies are overlapping more and more in the products they supply). Especially in a time when growing international marketing is becoming the norm, these partnerships can leverage your growth through alliances with international partners. Rather than take on the risk and expense that international expansion can demand, one can enter international markets by finding an appropriate alliance with a business operating in the marketplace you desire to enter.

A strategic alliance is essentially a partnership in which you combine efforts in projects ranging from getting a better price for supplies by buying in bulk together to building a product together with each of you providing part of its production. The goal of alliances is to minimize risk while maximizing your leverage and profit. Alliances are often confused withmergers, acquisitions, and outsourcing. While there are similarities in the circumstances in which a business might consider one these solutions, they are far from the same. Mergers and acquisitions are permanent, structural changes in how the company exists. Outsourcing is simply a way of purchasing a functional service for the company.

An alliance is simply a business-to-business collaboration. Another term that is frequently used in conjunction with alliances is establishing a business network. Alliances are formed for joint marketing, joint sales or distribution, joint production, design collaboration, technology licensing, and research and development. Relationships can be vertical between a vendor and a customer, horizontal between vendors, local, or global. Alliances often are established formally in a joint venture or partnership.

Businesses use strategic alliances to:

achieve advantages of scale, scope and speed

increase market penetration

enhance competitiveness in domestic and/or global markets

enhance product development

develop new business opportunities through new products and services

expand market development

increase exports

diversify

create new businesses

reduce costs.

Strategic alliances are becoming a more and more common tool for expanding the reach of your company without committing yourself to expensive internal expansions beyond your core business.

Bebo is set to overtake MySpace in the UK for visits before this fall, according to Hitwise. Bebo climbed to take the No. 2 spot, in the Hitwise Net Communities and Chat category last week, second only to MySpace. MySpace still leads social networking sites. Bebo is No. 2, but Bebo is fast closing the gap. Watch my interview with Bebo founder and CEO Michael Birch

Alliances 2011: Market and Technology Trends Impacting Alliances in the Year Ahead - January 11. Click here to register and for more information.

The California Chapter will once again be offering its Alliance Skills Mastery Series beginning in January 2011 through July 2011. Click here to register and for more information.

DC Chapter: The DC Chapter kicks off the new year with a presentation from Mark McLaughlin, President & CEO, VeriSign on January 20. Click here to register and for more information.

Pacific Northwest Chapter: Robert Porter Lynch, Chairman Emeritus of ASAP, will present "System of Trust" on January 21. Click here for more informaiton.

New England Chapter: Save the date for "impact of Behavioral Dynamics on Alliances" a webinar presented by Curt Sprouse on January 25. Click here to register and for more information.

UK Chapter: Save the date for this upcoming UK chapter event "The Mouse and the Elephant: Effective partnering and alliances for smaller companies" on January 26. Click here to register and for more information.

Carolina Chapter: Join colleagues from the Carolina chapter on February 21 for " Alliances and Partnerships in the Open Source Software Industry," an evening with Anne McClelland, Sr. Director, ISV Relationships, Global Business Development at Red Hat. Clickhere for more information.

New ASAP Website: As many of you have noticed, ASAP has launched a new website. We are experiencing some unexpected and unanticipated technical issues. Many of these issues have been resolved; however, if you encounter access difficulties, please contact Brendan Ward atbward@strategic-alliances.org or Rayna Minder at rminder@strategic-alliances.org.

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The Board of Directors and Staff of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals wish you a happy and joyous holiday season and new year!

11/10/2010

First of all, what is a strategic alliance? A strategic alliance is a partnership, a collaborative agreement and/or a relationship between two or more companies or organizations formed to pursue a set of agreed upon goals while remaining independent companies or organizations. Strategic alliances exist in a variety of shapes and sizes and include a wide range of scopes of cooperation levels. Strategic alliances usually are most effective when the entities involved have complementary strengths.

In another article I wrote entitled “Strategic Alliances And Their Powerful Benefits,” I listed twelve (12) clear and powerful benefits of strategic alliances. Now, in this article I suggest how to build successful strategic alliances. Here are the ten (10) suggested actions to take to build successful strategic alliances.

"The most beneficial type of partnering you can engage in is partnering with your customers. The benefits are compelling. You use it to gain customers, protect them from predation by competitors, and to protect your profit margins." Curtis E. Sahakian

"A customer benefits from partnering with a vendor only as long as the relationship fulfills its needs. The vendor, on the other hand, will try to maintain the relationship as long as possible." Curtis E. Sahakian

"A supplier will want a relationship that is difficult for a customer to walk away from, or for competitor vendors to disturb. The vendor should try to cultivate its partnering relations with a customer through close working ties with its customer's employees, or through its intimate understanding of its customer's business." Curtis E. Sahakian

"What you sell must be strategic or important to your customer or your customer's customer, otherwise it's not worth their time and energy to partner with you. A vendor can get a leg up if they possess any of the following characteristics: - They are already one of their customer's largest or most important vendors; - There is a good fit between the vendor's core competence and the customer's needs; or - The vendor can solve a problem faced by the customer's customer." Curtis E. Sahakian

Why Partner

"You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many customers." Curtis E. Sahakian

"Partnering is the quickest, most effective way to re-engineer a business." Curtis E. Sahakian

"Without local guides, your enemy employs the land as a weapon against you." Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"Well, you have NO CHOICE but to keep running faster just to stay in place. If you rely solely on your ability to implement internal change, you may not make it." Curtis E. Sahakian

"You can adapt by changing your organization's relationships with other organizations through corporate partnerings. Instead of building internal capabilities you turn to partnerships and alliances. As you need to change and adapt, you change partners. Companies that know how to form and use these partnerings are displacing those that don't get it." Curtis E. Sahakian

"Since (with the use of partnerings) the organizations minimize the amount of internal change, you don't face the same resistance from reluctant managers and executives slowing you down as they protect their jobs, their egos or their turfs. This way you can avoid employee morale problems." Curtis E. Sahakian

"Joint Ventures, Alliances, and other Corporate Partnerings are fueling the growth of the world's most successful companies. The demand to deliver more new products, more quickly, and at lower prices has never been greater. Joint Ventures and other collaborative business arrangements are revolutionizing how winning companies compete. They permit companies to enter new markets and field new products that they otherwise couldn't do on their own. They are the quickest way to grow your company, particularly in times of change." Curtis E. Sahakian

"Few companies have everything that they need. You may need money, customers, or product. No matter what you need, there is someone who has it. That someone is a potential Corporate Partner." Curtis E. Sahakian

"Partnering has proven itself one of the most powerful business tools for dealing with fast changing markets, technologies and customers. As the global economy speeds up, partnering is becoming the weapon of choice for today's successful competitors." Curtis E. Sahakian

Partnering Practices

"Partnering should be wielded as a sword, not a shield. It best suits companies with aspirations that exceed their resources. You should be driven by a motivation to reach out and gain market share, develop new markets, and leverage your current position." Curtis E. Sahakian

"Measure your success by how well you obtain your goals - not how well you get along with your partner." Curtis E. Sahakian

"There are three vital steps to partnering success: 1. Determine what it is you need but don't have: customers, capital, special expertise, products, production capacity, or distribution channels, 2. Determine who has what you need, 3. Ask them for it, but, first make sure you have something they want or need. (this last point is the most important)" Curtis E. Sahakian

Partnering Mistakes

"God is in the details." Mies Van der Roh

"The Devil is in the details." Anonymous

"There are routes not to be followed, armies not to be attacked, citadels not to be besieged, territory not to be fought over." Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

"Prospecting for partners is a difficult and subtle process. It's easy to dissipate huge quantities of critical executive time, money and corporate focus on false starts - partnerings destined from inception never to consummate nor bear fruit." Curtis E. Sahakian

"If you fail to get it right at the start, it may cost you dearly to fix it later - that is if you are even permitted the opportunity to fix it." Curtis E. Sahakian

"It is easier to get into trouble than to get out of it." Curtis E. Sahakian